With only about 20 days left in the campaign period the midterm election atmosphere is getting hotter as the weather that prevails all over the country. Candidates are getting frantic not a few have resorted to black propaganda and brazen lies but it looks like the electorates have already made up their mind and are not willing to trade their votes at this point in time.
The biggest factor that caused a major impact in the coming May 12 election is the kidnapping of former President Rodrigo Duterte. Thinking that perhaps in his absence and campaign sway the chances of the administration senatorial and congressional bets will perform better in the hustings, the plotters forcibly flew him to the Hague in the Netherlands and locked him up in the detention center of the International Court of Justice.
The social upheavals that took place all over the world thereafter protesting the arrest and incarceration of the weak and aging President must have shaken the incumbent leadership, but what hit them like a thunderbolt is the realization that what they just did resulted in an irreversible path to defeat.
The statistical figures in various straw polls done by all survey firms are testaments to the stunning backlash on the the Marcos-Romualdez driven political machineries. Front runners in the senatorial race are Senators Bong Go and Bato dela Rosa of FPRRD PDP-Laban. The others are catching up. In the area of Trust and Approval ratings VP Sara is way above the rest. Cousins Marcos and Romualdez combined scores can hardly come close to the trust and approval that the VP enjoys. This despite the denigration, impeachment and deprivation of fair budgetary allocation Congress grudgingly spared forvthe Office of the Vice President.
In the local political arena, in Davao City for example, the heavily funded political machinery of Karlo and Migs Nograles is bound to a humiliating defeat. Another reason why maybe VP Sara should again thank President Marcos for the magma of support she gets from the Filipino people. And then again she might yet hear another ironic presidential repartee: “Glad I could help”.
